Prospection: The Psychology of Foresight - Martin Seligman

Notes from Martin Seligman's key note at the 4th Australian Positive Psychology and Well-being Conference:

Homo Prospectus vs Homo Sapiens

We are not so much Homo Sapiens, that is, distinguished by knowledge, so much as Homo Prospectus, that is, distinguished by the ability to imagine far into the future.

We are not prisoners of our past

What you intend to do is based on what happened in the past; what you actually do is not.

Past + Present = Future is the (Social) Darwinian, Freudian, Marxian view that we are prisoners of our past.  This is wrong (strong version) or at least scientifically unuseful (weak version).

"Psychoanalysis and behaviourism have both been enormous failures, both empirically and theoretically."

"The data doesn't support that childhood conflict predicts adult personality."

We are constantly generating simulations about possible futures.

"Present representations of the future guide our behaviour."

Evolution favours mechanisms of accurately anticipating the future.

What you are seeing right now is a hallucination...

There are 10 times as many fibres going back to the visual system than from it. The visual system is involved in simulations of the future.

"What you are seeing right now is a hallucination based on what you expect."

These all trigger the same neural circuitry:

• Imagine the future
• Imagine what s/he is thinking
• Do nothing
• Suppress a memory
• Imagine anything

Humans have a roughly 50 second cycle: listen for 50 seconds, go inside for 50 seconds, listen for 50 seconds, etc.

Intractable Problems

Free Will

"Free will is nothing more than the simulation of possible futures [and choosing between them]".  Enhancing free will is about helping people improve the richness of the simulations and become better evaluators.

Consciousness / Subjective States

Why is the world clothed in subjectivity?

What's the big brain about?

The big brain is not about detecting truth; it is about persuasion.

The right Turing test is whether a a machine can persuade you to do something.

Psychopathology and Prospection

Psychopathology is when prospection goes awry.

Triad of cognitive problems:

• The present is terrible
• The future will continue to be terrible
• I don't have the personal ability to improve

Social Media Correlations with Time Orientation

Study using social media where humans rated language for time orientation in order to train a machine learning model.

The older you are, the more past and future-oriented you are, the less present-oriented you are.

The more conscientious you are, the more future-oriented you are and the less present-oriented you are.

The more impulsive you are, the more present-oriented you are and the less future-oriented you are.

The more satisfied with life you are, the more future-oriented you are.

Creativity

Creativity != originality.

Originality means a novel simulation of the future.  Kids are good at this.

Creativity requires evaluation, a sense of the audience.  Selling is crucial to creativity.  Kids are bad at this.

"Originality is cheap."

"Beware originality without evaluation."